How to Open Old-Fashioned Soda Bottles

By Amelia Allonsy

Modern soda bottles are capped with a convenient twist-off cap you simply remove with your fingers. Old-fashioned glass soda bottles were capped with a crimped metal cap, a style you sometimes find in bottles sold today. If you try to twist off one of these caps — almost everyone has done it — you’ll likely hurt your hand while the cap doesn’t budge. These caps require a bottle opener, which uses leverage to pry the cap off the bottle. Styles vary, including wall-mount openers, bar blades, church keys and multi-tools, but the basic principle remains.

Things You'll Need

Bottle opener

Hook the small lip of the bottle opener under the metal cap on the soda bottle. This might appear as a simple hook as is the case with church keys, or a wide, curved lip as with bar blades and wall-mount bottle openers.

Rest the end of the bottle opener mechanism against the bottle cap. Hook-type bottle openers have almost a small metal arm that rests on the bottle cap to use the cap as a fulcrum. Bar blades and wall-mount openers have an opening at the end so when you hook the cap, the rest of the bottle opener automatically rests on the cap.

Pull up on the bottle opener to pry the metal cap off the bottle neck. This doesn’t require much force because of the lever action. In the case of wall-mount bottle openers, push down on the bottle instead of moving the bottle opener, but the lid is pried up in the same way as with other bottle openers.

Tips

Hold the bottle firmly in your non-dominant hand so the leverage force doesn’t make you drop the bottle.